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Motunui
Motunui. One of the many corners of the world that finds itself as a home for the civilisations of humanity. For thousands of years, men have wrought homes, towns, cities, and fortifications from the breast of this land. They have forged friendships, brotherhoods, alliances, and empires. They have scored lines across maps of this land, and then slaughtered each other to move them. They, along with their homes and cities, their brotherhoods and empires, and their imaginary lines, have lived, and died, on Motunui. ' ' Two cultures dominate Motunui in the modern age; the Tangata and the Shar. The Tangata take their traditions, language, and culture from the most ancient people of Motunui, and their ways are most prominent in the east. The Shar descend from immigrants from a northern land known as Yalan. The first of them to set foot on Motunui were refugees from war, and in this land the ancestors of the Shar found a new life. The influence of their culture is greatest in the west. ' ' Although the earliest meetings of Tangata and Shar were brief and violent, any bad blood between the groups has long since disappeared. It is common, although not inevitable, for people all across Motunui to speak both Shar and Tangata. ' ' Many cultures from across the globe influence the people of Motunui, especially in the port cities of Rivermouth and Whangatawhito, and the melting pot that is The Crossroad. ' ' Living in long isolation from the cultures of humanity are the tribes of Taniwha that dwell within the southwestern reaches of Ngarohere forest. Not much is known about these creatures; they do not take kindly to humans that stray into their lands, although they very rarely pursue trespassers beyond their own borders. Many legends hold them to be either protectors of the forest, or monsters that will one day rise up to destroy the humans of Motunui and claim the land for themselves. ' ' The people of Motunui trade in many things: grains, livestock, Taito silks and jewels, or the precious silver and gold of Milrae. However, thanks to the wealth and influence of the Kaihoko, most people of Motunui accept their coins of iron, pounamu, and paua. These precisely cut pieces are engraved with the Kaihoko’s insignia, and the engraving process is an aggressively kept secret. ' ' The civilisations of Motunui vary greatly; while a foreigner may only ever visit the six cities, the majority of Motunui’s population is not so urban. Countless towns and villages dot the landscape, tribes of Tangata roam the land as their ancestors have for centuries or possibly millennia, and there are those who live only by the bounty of nature, hunting and gathering to survive. The six city-states of Motunui have historically been independent of one another, ever since their founding almost two hundred years ago with the death of King Tuheitia. In modern times, largely thanks to the Kaihoko, the cities trade freely between one another, and are economically interdependent despite their sovereignty.